Abstract

Professor Nathan’s goals in this short work are to describe the various senses of "just," to classify the ways in which the moral assessments of actions depend on conception of justice, to explain the logical and psychological factors which affect the popularity of various views of justice, and to explore the political implications of egalitarianism. He contends that there can be as many senses of "just" as there are standards which can be intelligibly used for deciding what makes one state of affairs more valuable than another. For example, in deciding which punishment is appropriate for a crime, an indefinite number of criteria can be used, and, so, a punishment may be just in some senses and unjust in others. The moralist’s task is to establish the sense of justice that is proper to use in a given circumstance. Although Nathan does not defend any view of justice, he does criticize several historically important views. He contends that retributive or desert-dependent views of justice lead to inconsistent results or attach importance to emotionally irrelevant considerations. The final chapter distinguishes various egalitarian views and traces some of the implications of these views for a moral assessment of capitalism. An appendix, which was written prior to the publication of John Rawls’ recent influential book, provides a short analysis of Rawls’ theory of justice. Although Professor Nathan makes a number of valuable distinctions, his book is far too concise and would have benefited from the use of more examples and the elimination of some of his specially devised jargon.—M.G.